Hardware is an Acer Revo R3610. Yes to two NICs - one the built-in ethernet port, the other a USB to Gigabit Ethernet adaptor. I'm not using the built-in WIFI. Unfortunately there is no way to disable the WIFI card in the BIOS. 2Gb RAM, 260Gb HDD, dual-core Atom N330 processor.

Yes, I know this is an 'ickle machine for a hybrid, but I have no other MDs on the network yet so I reckon it should cope.

It most likely still thinks that is a valid NIC in your system, and it's highly likely this is messing up the install, so either disable it (unplug or in BIOS, wouldn't know why there is no option in there for it). Or....................................................

Dig a little deeper and make sure your Nic's are in the right order after installing Ubuntu

please google and search the forums here to figure that one out. If no answers to you, post your ifconfig here after installing ubuntu.

That machine doesnt have the balls to be a core/hybrid IMO. Everything glitchy slow choppy at 1080p in my experience... others seem to say it is enough.

Moreover, 7.10 is not going to recognize the internal nic, that whole nvidia forcedeth thing. Those things are kind of a pain to take apart btw... I always feel like I am 1 ppi from snapping something. but removing the wifi will not error anything out.

As memory serves... the way to disable it in the bios has to do with crushing the PCI IDE controller... I can't remember, but I remember it wasn't what I was expecting... but I just pull it and keep it in my never ending pile of stuff I hope will be useful one day.